"I'm sorry," Crag said quietly. He hadn't known Temple personally. He had been just a name--a whispered name. One of three names, to be exact: Romer, Temple, Crag. Each had been hand-picked as possible pilots of the Aztec, a modified missile being rushed to completion in a last ditch effort to beat the Eastern World in the race for the moon. They had been separately indoctrinated, tested, trained; each had virtually lived in one of the scale-size simulators of the Aztec's space cabin, and had been rigorously schooled for the operation secretly referred to as "Step One." But they had been kept carefully apart. There had been a time when no one--unless it were the grim-faced Gotch--knew which of the three was first choice. Romer had died first--killed as a bystander in a brawl. So the police said. Crag had suspected differently. Now Temple. The choice, after all, had not been the swarthy Colonel's to make. Somehow the knowledge pleased him. Gotch interrupted his thoughts. "Things are happening. The chips are down. Time has run out, Adam." While he clipped the words out he weighed Crag, as if seeking some clue to his thoughts. His face said that everything now depended upon the lean man with the hairline scar across his cheek. His eyes momentarily wondered if the lean man could perform what man never before had done. But his lips didn't voice the doubt. After a moment he said: "We know the East is behind us in developing an atomic spaceship. Quite a bit behind. We picked up a lot from some of our atomic sub work--that and our big missiles. But maybe the knowledge made us lax." He added stridently: "Now ... they're ready to launch." "Now?" "Now!" "I didn't think they were that close." "Intelligence tells us they've modified a couple of T-3's--the big ICBM model. We just got a line on it ... almost too late." Gotch smiled bleakly. "So we've jumped our schedule, at great risk. It's your baby," he added. Crag said simply; "I'm glad of the chance." "You should be. You've hung around long enough," Gotch said dryly. His eyes probed Crag. "I only hope you've learned enough ... are ready." "Plenty ready," snapped Crag. "I hope so." Gotch got to his feet, a square fiftyish man with cropped iron-gray hair, thick shoulders and weather-roughened skin. Clearly he wasn't a desk colonel. "You've got a job, Adam." His voice was unexpectedly soft but he continued to weigh Crag for a long moment before he picked up his cap and turned toward the door. "Wait," he said. He paused, listening for a moment before he opened it, then slipped quietly into the hall, closing the door carefully behind him. He's like a cat, Crag thought for the thousandth time, watching the closed door. He was a man who seemed forever listening; a heavy hulking man who walked on velvet feet; a man with opaque eyes who saw everything and told nothing. Gotch would return.